We campaigned for it, and by god we got it! And if it's Zombie Gold you can bloody well beat them with it!

The Avatar wrote:I like the idea of scaling mana recovered to cost, probably one for one and making LEMISI give an extra hp per level.

As long as CB isn't this ridiculous. But B2P needs something done to it as well, I'm serious. Add a 1 point mana cost to it? I like pulling a few mana points off a full explored map as much as the next person, but when you add it all togather it still means an extra fireball or 1.5 extra pissorf for any spike at any point. On top of what you would get if it was just a 1 for one excange. The way it is now it's better than the Battlemage Ring by a long shot (or anything else except CB, tbh, and by no small margin).

Has anyone done the maths on whether the current B2P makes halflings actually better than gnomes for mana spiking, provided enough blackspace? Because it calculates health cost per level, yet you can load up a big bunch of health and potions and various other crap (like bloodswells and sanguine) that counts percentages?

The Avatar wrote:I think NL needs a makeover. Since it's cramped, Binlor is great. Since it is almost all high damage low hp forms, rogues are cheap. I think more variety and more interesting layout.

Ty for putting this into a concise form. I got worked up because it's the exact same problem that Eastern Tundra had before they remade it to be a bit more spacious. People were actualy playing it due to location and questlines and there were rightful complaints. The solution was a bit inellegant there, but the difficulty went down really fast, and you deffinitely don't need Binlor for it.

Last edited by Lujo on Thu Jan 17, 2013 9:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Has anyone done the maths on whether the current B2P makes halflings actually better than gnomes for mana spiking, provided enough blackspace? Because it calculates health cost per level, yet you can load up a big bunch of health and potions and various other crap (like bloodswells and sanguine) counts percentages?

Max health bonuses are the most plentiful in the game, so increasing your max health, leveraging a %-based regeneration scheme, and then converting 1:1 to mana makes sense.

In practice (the PQI seems to love halfling bloodmages for me, so I've done it) blackspace ends up being the limiting factor and you'll run out of that long before you've finished your potions. Maybe if you had zombie money or look upon the waters in the basement...

On the other hand, I've been using bloodswels for leveling ever since I unlocked B2P. If you can spare the blackspace, and it's totaly worth it, it gives more fireballs than Clearance does. Especially with just about any subdungeon.

Just count it - 2 fireballs from your mana pool, 3 if wizard. 2 more from a regular health pool, 2 more from bloodswell, and 1 more from CB. That's a lot of fireballs. Throw an IMAWAL down before the fight, save up a few charges on CB, find a soft lvl8 or 9 and procede to the boss fight... Just remember to pick stuff that you revealed up, since the routine also does exploration for you, and set up a nice ding for the boss fight...

Oh, forgot to mention that if you're going this route, you picked up lifesteal rather than sanguine, so you can probably count on one more fireball from munching on random popcorn before you throw the IMAWAL down... Price? a bunch of drac piety, 5 gold, some blackspace and a walled up popcorn.

Last edited by Lujo on Thu Jan 17, 2013 10:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, forgot to mention that if you're going this route, you picked up lifesteal rather than sanguine, so you can probably count on one more fireball from munching on random popcorn befor you throw the IMAWAL down...

Not to mention that at such a low level the loss of max life from sanguine is going to be a lot more painful.

Oh, forgot to mention that if you're going this route, you picked up lifesteal rather than sanguine, so you can probably count on one more fireball from munching on random popcorn befor you throw the IMAWAL down...

Not to mention that at such a low level the loss of max life from sanguine is going to be a lot more painful.

Yep. It doesn't mesh well with this approach, and neither does the +1 level thing (even though I constantly take it and just blow health potions while I level to make up for the difference. The piety hits! They do nothing!). If there was a way to guarantee you'll find them, the extra health bosoters might even be ok for this...

Seeing how you don't really need much more other stuff, prepping a random translocation scroll in case you can snag a Battlemage Ring or Mage Plate, or something to boost either your health or magic damage is probably worth it... Or even stone sigil...

But as far as "worth it?" is concerned, the strat is too damned good, especially seeing how it can entirely be prepped if you opt for bloodmage. BM + CB + Drac and you're set. Which is just one of the reasons why B2P is too good as is...